


Exposed

by admiralty, ATTHS_TWICE



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Doctor/Patient, Episode: s02e25 Anasazi, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-08 22:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17989640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralty/pseuds/admiralty, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ATTHS_TWICE/pseuds/ATTHS_TWICE
Summary: Set during the events of the episode "Anasazi." Mulder arrives at Scully's apartment and she tends to his illness, sees a little more than she should, and deals with some confusing feelings on the matter.





	Exposed

Arriving at Scully’s apartment and parking the car, Mulder had a hard time remembering the drive over. His head was pounding. He could feel sweat on his forehead and the chills running through him.

He pushed himself from the car, slamming the door, and then stumbled toward the front steps of her building. Leaning against the walls, he used them for balance to get him to her door. Stopping once to collect his senses, he took a breath and kept moving.

Knocking on her door, he held himself up, but barely, feeling as if he would collapse at any moment. Something felt… off. He was reacting to what had just happened, but he felt sick, nauseated. _What was wrong with him?_ He heard the lock and the doorknob turning, and he knew if he fell, she would catch him.

Her face swam before him and he did fall, her arms reaching out to catch him, just as he knew she would. Dazedly, he clung to her, turning with her as she closed the door, the concern in her voice registering in his ears.

“I'm okay,” he said, the words coming out automatically.

 _Fine. Okay. My father just died in my arms_. The thought made him sicker as he sat down. Scully’s insistent voice, and her familiar arms, was the only support drawing him forward.

He let her lead him, her words not registering. The only thing thing that mattered was finding his father’s killer. The fact that he left his father dead and alone on his couch, hurt him deep inside.

 _It’s_ _unforgivable_ , _Fox_. He could almost hear his father say it, berating him even from death. But Scully had been right to instruct him to get out of there. He allowed her rationality to win out over his emotional state this time. 

“You gotta find them, Scully,” he said, his head spinning, needing to right this wrong. He knew he was not going to be able to remain upright much longer. She needed to do what he could not.

He could hear her speaking again as she led him to her bedroom, but it was as if she was far away, her words mere sounds and not coherent. She gently guided him back and made him lie down on her bed. The room spun, and he was not sure that she understood what he needed.

“We gotta find out who killed my father,” he said as he sat up, the room shifting so much he felt he may vomit.

Scully’s hand on his neck, and her soothing words, as she once again guided him back down, grounded him.

“Well, right now you need to rest. Okay? Just rest. There. It's okay. It’s okay.”

He heard her words more clearly now. He closed his eyes for a minute, the cool cloth making him more aware of the heat within his body.

“My father, Scully,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at her, seeing her worry.

“I know, Mulder. We’ll find them. Right now, you just need to rest. I’m here. You’re okay.”

He nodded and then groaned. He felt her shift, and then his shoes were taken off his feet. Hands were on his chest, unbuttoning his shirt, and he felt powerless to help her. She gently pulled him up, and he could hear her comforting words in his ear, as she slid the shirt off his shoulders.

Her hands moved across his skin as she helped him lie back down. His chest, his cheeks, his forehead. Soft, cool hands that again made him realize how feverish he truly was. Sure doctor’s hands that quickly divested him of clothing. Then, he felt her hands at the buttons of his jeans and he felt a second of panic. Cognitive dissonance. _Scully was unbuttoning his pants._ For some reason he balked at the notion. Doctor or no, he needed to be the one to take off his pants.

He clumsily moved her hands and started to pull his pants down. Lifting his hips slightly, he felt a wave of nausea, at the same time he heard her voice louder than before, almost like a warning. Her hands suddenly covering his was the last thing he remembered before everything went black.

 

***

 

It hadn’t been on her mind at all.

Mulder’s father had been shot, he was behaving extremely erratically, and both of their positions at the FBI were in jeopardy. These were her thoughts the entire time she waited for him to arrive, unsure of what to expect.

But when he came through the door the feelings she’d buried from the moment they met, the troublesome, inappropriate, _inconvenient_ feelings she thought he’d chased away long ago with his tiresome antics were resurfacing. It was impossible to ignore them.

His health was still first and foremost on her mind, not only because from the moment she saw him she instantly entered Doctor Mode, but because she truly worried for him all the time. Mulder was not your average workaholic, he put his time and energy and blood and sweat and tears into his work every minute of every day, and it was exhausting to watch, let alone be an intimate part of.

And his father had just died. She thought of Ahab and felt a pang for Mulder, a man who was already untethered to his family, losing that final connection with his father in the midst of the chaos already surrounding him.

She soothed him with comforting words, his thoughts of finding his father’s murderer escaping his lips with varying degrees of coherency. Her only concern was getting him to lay down and making him comfortable. She bypassed her couch, even though she suspected it might have been his comfortable place of choice, and moved him directly to her bed.

Laying him down gently, she removed his shoes first. Her fingers deftly unbuttoned his bloody shirt, raising him up to remove it. Then her hands moved to his belt, then his jeans button, and she heard him mumbling something. Before she knew what he was doing or why, he’d arched his hips up slightly and taken down his own pants. But he’d miscalculated.

In an instant, all those forbidden thoughts she’d pushed down, deep down, reared their ugly heads. He’d lowered his pants and took down much more than he’d intended, certainly revealing much more than he’d intended.

She saw it. _It._ Mulder’s little agent. And it was not so little.

She knew this was bound to happen at some point, she’d known it since he’d written “Dana Scully, M.D.” on his emergency contact information. The glimpses she’d caught in the past were brief, hazy. Back at Eisenhower Field, for example, he was near death and practically freezing, and in her urgency and panicked state, anything she might have seen hadn’t registered.

But what occurred now in one second completely changed her perspective on the matter and she couldn’t do anything about that. Thoughts of Mulder as a male specimen, a potential partner, all the things she tried to avoid thinking about invaded the most primal part of her lizard brain in this instant as she saw him laid bare, in her bed. It wasn’t because she was looking at a man, it was because she was looking at this _particular_ man and she knew it. She felt incredibly guilty and somewhat invasive as if by complete and utter accident she’d violated him.

She knew the truth though; she was more troubled by her own reaction than by anything else.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she instinctively reached for his gray cotton boxers and began to pull them back up. “Mulder, you don’t need to take everything off.” He didn’t hear her, as his hips had dropped back to the bed and he conveniently passed out. She was then faced with the task of having to lift his weight, which was substantial, by slipping her hands underneath him and lifting his rear. It felt incredibly intimate and her discomfort was only matched by the tender feelings she felt towards him in this moment, helpless and so utterly trusting of her.

Her face was mere inches from his exposed penis, and she felt ridiculous for feeling such panic. She was a doctor, for God’s sake. Where was this all coming from? As quickly as she could, she awkwardly gripped the waistband of his underwear and yanked it up. After he was safely tucked away she instinctively pulled away, breathing a sigh of relief.

His pants were still bunched around his hips, his shirt dangling off his arm. She had to finish, to make him comfortable. In spite of the inappropriate thoughts swimming in her head at this most inconvenient moment, she still feared for him, for the trouble he was going to be in.

As quickly as possible she slid his pants all the way down and off. His weapon was still attached to his belt holster, and she removed it, planning to take it straight down to ballistics to clear his name. Her certainty that he hadn’t killed his father outweighed any of his potential arguments on the matter. She removed his shirt the rest of the way and then took off his socks, flinging everything over the chair next to her bed.

Turning his weapon over in her hands, she set it on her dresser, then went to her bathroom to retrieve a thermometer and the supplies she’d need to care for him through the night. She could already tell he had a fever and she had no idea what was wrong with him, but she knew it was something more than just shock.

She’d been faced with tending to his injuries before, but this time felt different. Such as it was every day with Mulder since she met him; the ways in which they were thrust towards each other then jerked back was giving her emotional whiplash. It was no wonder she had no idea how to feel when this man who had replaced everything worthwhile in her life, every hope and dream and idle fantasy of normalcy, was suddenly in her apartment. In her bed. Practically naked.

It was hard for her to disassociate personal from professional under these conditions. The context seemed to ruin everything with them, all the time. Even when she dared to wonder what it would be like to have Mulder in her bed, that goddamn unwanted passenger that went by the name of “context” slipped into the backseat of their relationship.

He was in her bed, but only because he was injured. She was undressing him, but only because she was his doctor.

_Only because. Only because._

She couldn’t give herself permission to wonder at the moment. Her Hippocratic Oath prevented her from feeling the way she dared herself to.

_First, do no harm._

She valued Mulder as her partner, as her friend. She had no right to think of him any other way. But the thoughts, the ones she rarely entertained, still continued to find a way to break through.

She pictured her mother’s admonishments every time she visited. Hoping and praying she’d settle down, find someone to share her life with.

_First, do no harm._

She thought of Mulder, how there was no way in hell he could ever fulfill that role for anyone, much less for her. She loved him, truly, but in what way exactly she wasn’t prepared to explore.

_First, do no harm._

She was too afraid to explore.

_Do not harm this relationship, Dana._

She reached forward to feel his brow, sweaty, on fire. She sighed. Tonight, she would wonder about all the things she never let herself wonder about.

Tomorrow she would leave this apartment and clear her partner’s name.

**Author's Note:**

> Both of us wanted to take a swing at this and since it was such a short fic idea, we thought we'd collaborate. Feedback is always appreciated! 
> 
> Based off a prompt from @Arlandria_22 "I need to see that scene where she took off his clothes!" and somewhat off a prompt from @AweburnPhoenix: "Told ya she saw him naked here and I stand by it ." ;)
> 
> (Thanks ladies, for the inspiration. Seriously, the words fairly flew across the page. This episode is MY episode and how I haven’t written something about it before, well heaven only knows. -Crystal)


End file.
